Love in the Sixties
by dvsgall
Summary: Very AU. When family comes to visit Annie she regales them with a story of how she met a special someone, the courtship that ensued, and the eventful life that came after. First Fanfic so constructive criticism is welcomed
1. Chapter 1

"Gram will you tell me a story?"

Annie looked up from the game of checkers she was engaged in and smiled softly. Her brown eyed opponent that sat across from her was gazing eargerly in her direction with a grin on her face.

"But darlin', what about our game? Don't you want to finish it first?" Annie asked. The little girl, Gwen, shook her head, curls bouncing everywhere.

"No…I'm not going to win anyways. I'm pretty sure I've lost already", the little girl said forlornly.

"Well not with that attitude you certainly won't win! You won't even finish!" Annie scolded. "I know that your parents taught you to not be a sore loser."

The little girl huffed as she replied "No ma'am, they didn't teach me to be a sore loser. But they also didn't teach me that my grandmother was so competitive and wouldn't even let her little granddaughter win a game of checkers!"

Annie chuckled to herself. Her granddaughter was right. She was competitive. But, if she let her win undeservingly and allowing her to become cocky, then it seemed to Annie that a sort of cheating was ensuing, and where was the right in that? She thought. "Well then. We'll finish the game after the story. How 'bout that?" she asked shooting for a compromise.

"Hmmn…I think that'd work," was the answer from Gwen.

After sliding the checker board to the other end of the table Annie got up to put on a pot of coffee.

Whenever she told a story kitchen-table style she always had a cup of coffee next to her sip on. It added a nice touch to the ambiance of story time with her granddaughter.

"So what kind of story are you thinking of?" she inquired. Annie had lots of stories she could tell her granddaughter, some humorous and some very sombering. But she would save those for a later date she decided as she heard Gwen ask for a story about the first time she met Granddad. Annie couldn't help but smile as she thought of how the little girl was probably going to grow up to be a hopeless romantic, not unlike herself, and how she wasn't helping to squash the seed.

The coffee pot chirped and Annie poured herself a cup with Skinny Vanilla Latte Creamer and sat down. "Now why on earth would you want to hear a story about your Granddad and me? Aren't we just a

couple of old 'peeps' living far away from you?"

Gwen shook her head vehemently, making her curls bounce once again. "Noooo! You're not old Gram. You're refined."

Annie arched an eyebrow. "Refined? Ha! Now who'd you hear that from?"

"Granddad" the Gwen answered with a small grin.

"Granddad… Why am I not surprised?" Annie mumbled under her breath good-naturadly. "Well where should I start—"

"—Hey Gram, where are dad and granddad?"

"I thought you wanted a story? Not the answers to all your questions," Annie asked with a wry smile. Luckily her granddaughter had inherited the sarcasm gene and understood her grandmother was only joking around and simply grinned. "I think they went to find your momma a Mother's Day gift. Is that alright with you?" she asked.

"Yep, alright with me! Hey Gram?"

"Yes darlin'?"

"Could you start the story now?"

Chuckling to herself she launched into the account of the first time she ever met one August Anderson.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hi everyone! Since this is somewhat of a frame story and will utilize Annie's flashbacks and Annie's present day thoughts throughout the telling of it I've been trying to work out how to put the present day into the flashbacks some way. I don't want to interrupt the flow of the story too much so I've decided that whatever is bolded and in parenthesis will be Annie speaking to her granddaughter (and other audience), mostly explaining stuff or editing it for her eight year old ears. Does that make sense? Oh, and although it seem as if this is just an Annie and Jai thing, never fear. Auggie is coming in here soon!**

"_And as the death and injury tolls continue to rise in Vietnam…"_

My study partner Jai looked up at me with surprise as I slammed my physics book closed. In question he raised a single eyebrow.

"What?" I asked.

"Well, it's just that normally you treat books with the reverence monks give the Bible. So what gives today?" he asked.

I looked pointedly at the cloudy sky above us, then my physics textbook, and finally at the radio we had been listening to while we studied. "It's just that I thought this dreary day couldn't get any drearier, then the announcer interrupts a perfectly good Joni Mitchell song to talk about the rising injury and death toll in Vietnam. I mean, I'm all for stopping the Commies, but come on! Can't we just forget about the impending gloom and doom for a little bit and hear some music?" I asked exasperatedly.

Jai chuckled and gave a slight shrug of his shoulders as if to say, _it's not your gloom and doom, so what's it to you?_ I sighed. Why did I even expect empathy from Jai Wilcox? The guy was great at physics, great at helping me study, and great at ki**—(uh…he was, uh let's just say he was great at other things too)**. But, however great he may have been in some departments, he failed miserably in others. Tact and empathy were the two big ones we had been working on lately, and obviously he had gained nothing from my tutelage as of yet. Well he hadn't gained any tact or empathy. _He had gained a few other things_, I thought with a smile.

"Listen Annie, I got to run. My trig class starts in about ten minutes and it's on the other side of campus. But I'll see you tonight for dinner?" he asked as he stood up and gathered his books and the radio that was still spouting out gloom and doom.

"Turn that thing off would you?" Jai grinned and cut it down. "Anyways, yeah that's fine with me. Gosh, I didn't realize it was so late already. I've got to scoot too. If I'm late one more time to my French class I think M. DeLaundelaire is going to have my head. Or worse—he's going to fail me," I said as I also gathered my things.

"Be realistic Annie. He is not going to fail you. I'm pretty sure he's in love with you, or at least he's in love with your language skills," Jai said reassuringly. Maybe he was learning tact. "Women aren't normally academics. He probably thinks you're some prodigal freak of nature."

There went the tact.

"Jai, I'll see you later at that new pizza place okay?" I asked as he started walking towards the stairs leading down from the roof of the library where we had been studying, choosing to ignore that last comment about women and freaks of nature.

"M'kay. Yeah, I'll see you tonight at eight at Allen's. It's beside the football fields," he said without turning around.

"Yeah Jai, I know where the place is. I'll see you at eight." I sighed. "I may be a woman, but I'm not an idiot." I watched him walk down the stairs and out of sight. I sat back down, almost feeling defeated. Sometimes men like Jai Wilcox just really annoyed me. The ones who thought a chromosome difference made them superior. Well—what they didn't realize was that Y was just a defective X.

"_Americans are finding themselves faced with a choice…"_

"Ugh! Why. Are. You. Still. ON?" I screamed at Jai's radio. He'd left it on deliberately, to irritate me. I know it. Well, two could play at that game. And letting my temper get the best of me I picked his little portable radio up **(which in the sixties was an extremely pricy item)** and launched it off the roof of where I was still sitting. I felt a sort of demented satisfaction when I heard it hit the first floor roof of the library. Smiling to myself I gathered my books so that I could head off to my French class. Then I heard:

"What on earth? You know, man, you've got your nerve…"


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I sort of forgot about this in my previous two chapters. Yikes! But obviously I don't own anything or anyone (except the wacky professor haha) and I gain absolutely nothing from this except enjoyment and a fun way to let off steam. **

I walked slowly over to the edge of the roof and peered down over it. There was the radio, in about a million pieces, sitting on the ground. There was also a man, rubbing his head and muttering under his breath. He was holding what looked like a piece of the radio in his hand.

_Uh-oh_ I thought. Just then, the man glanced up at the roof where I was standing. Quickly I turned around, hopefully fast enough where he wasn't able to catch a glimpse of my face. I couldn't imagine what the guy would say if he found out I was behind the falling radio and the headache that would probably accompany it later.

By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs with all of my stuff in hand, the man was gone.

I barely made it to my French class on time. Hurriedly I tried to make my way to the back of the room, head down, before M. DeLaundelaire could glare at me. It had worked in the past, today not so much. Just as I sat down I heard an "ahem". The professor was waiting for my excuse. _Well Monsieur, I spent the better part of the morning listening to a report about Vietnam, then had a minor fight with my study partner (and whatever else he was), lost my temper and yelled at an inanimate object, and finally concluded the morning with launching said object off the top of the library and hitting a very offended, unsuspecting soul in the head._ For some reason I had the feeling that if I spouted all of that out then M. DeLaundelaire would through me out of class for being difficult or something like that. So instead I just mumbled an apology of "désolé" and found my seat.

"Lisez page 342 et répondez à questions. Vous avez vingt minutes," he announced. I reached to get my book and realized that instead of French, all I had was physics. _Oh great. You're on a roll today Annie,_ I thought. Late and I didn't have my text book.

Now, I'd like to say this kind of thing never happened, but the unfortunate reality was that it did. I mean, I was a college student in the sixties. I had a lot of things going on. Between the Russians and Vietnamese, we thought the world was getting taken over. I was constantly worrying about my father who was a general **(yep, your great-grandfather was a general)** and becoming increasingly difficult to be around because he was always so stressed. I was trying to figure out what was going on in my personal life, trying to convince my mother I didn't need a man to complete me, and trying to prove everyone wrong and show that women could succeed in college. Let's face it: grabbing the correct text book leaving my dormitory ranked pretty low on the list. But, a pity party would get me absolutely no where with my French professor. And in reality, pity had never really been my thing.

So I did the only thing I knew to do. I leaned forward and tapped the boy in front of me. Come to think of it, this boy looked familiar. I couldn't figure out why though. I had never seen him before in this class. The seat in front of me had always been empty. Strange… well hopefully he was friendly enough.

He cocked his head to the side to acknowledge me. "Hey!" I whispered. "Can I borrow your book just to glance at the questions when you're done?"

Turning completely back around to face the front he whispered "No".

"What? Come on now, don't be a jerk. Help a lady out here. Think of it as you're helping a damsel in distress," I said with a little bit of an incredulous chuckle. What was with this guy? **(I remember distinctly thinking at that moment that he must have been one of the many that thought I was just like any other girl. Air-headed and mooching off Daddy's money).** "Sil te plait? Prêtez-moi ton livre?" I asked sweetly in French trying a new tactic.

This got my new adversary to turn completely around. He chuckled and said "Well, I'd gladly let you borrow it. However, I'm not sure it'll do you much good. You see, not only is it in French—it's also in Braille".

I'll be honest. I probably gasped. But not because this guy was blind. And also not because this new mystery man probably had the most expressive, deep, and beautiful chocolate brown eyes I had ever seen.

Nope. The reason I gasped was because he had a very large and noticeable goose egg jutting out from his forehead. And if I wasn't mistaken that was a piece of a radio in his bag right there on the floor. The very same piece of the very same radio that I had launched off the roof.

"Uh…I…um never mind. Actually I do have mine! False alarm," I said ducking my head. **(I suppose the fact this man was blind didn't register with me initially)**. I quickly got up and walked to the front of the room. I sucked it up and told M. DeLaundelaire I had forgotten my book. Begrudgingly he gave me a spare student's copy he had, while muttering unintelligently in French. The only thing I caught for sure was "irresponsable" and "américaine". Translation: irresponsible and American. Ha ha. I really was on a roll today.

French text in hand I started back to my seat. Chancing a glance at my mystery man I saw him slowly shaking his head and muttering something too. Grr, what was it with people mumbling under their breath today? I took my seat once again and set to work on my French exercise.

Suprisingly I made it to Allen's on time. Allen's was this great little pizza place Jai had found about month after he asked me out on a date. I remember him making sure that it was very clear this was just a study date. Apparently he had some girl friend back where he was from. That's why I was never really sure what we were. Because ever since that first study "date" Jai had found increasingly fancier places for us to take our physics homework and I'm pretty sure the last place that we dined by candlelight at, that he paid for, frowned upon the Georgetown sweatshirt I had brought and the text books we lugged onto the table. In short, my "situation" with Jai Wilcox was flabbergasting me.

"Hey, sorry I'm late. There was a little bit of an emergency in the department," Jai said smoothly as he sat down and planted a small peck on my cheek. Whoa! That had never happened in public before. See, it was the tiny escalating things like that, things I'm not sure I wanted to happen, which were giving my emotions whiplash.

Of course, I tried to play it cool. So I ignored his sudden advance and hoped that girlfriend really did live wherever he was from and wasn't hanging around Allen's. "Oh yeah?"

"Oh yeah. Annie it was the weirdest thing. One minute there was this huge rock…" and he proceeded to tell me of the so-called emergency in the stupid physics department that had kept him from meeting me on time. The thing about Jai was that he would continue a story with the slightest encouragement. All I had to do was nod and say "oh really?" every couple of sentences and he didn't even realize I was listening. "And then I was on my way back and realized I had left my portable radio on the library roof. So I stopped by to get it and it was gone. I suppose someone must have taken it. Damn shame too. It was quite an expensive little gadget," he said. "What do you think Annie?"

"Oh really?" I said not realizing he had reached the end of his story.

"What? Annie, I asked what you think happened to my portable radio?" he repeated exasperatedly as if talking to a child. Whenever I missed something or asked a question this was how Jai always responded.

"Oh yeah, about that…it was on the ledge and I accidently knocked it off. I'll help you find another one," I said distractedly looking at the front door of Allen's.

"What? You knocked it off? Annnieee…you've got to start being more cognizant of your surroundings. Last week it was my record with 'Battle of the Green Beret' on it and the week before that it was—and dang it Annie! What are you looking at?" he asked angrily after realizing I was no longer listening.

At that moment our waiter came up to ask for our drink and pizza orders. Jai forgot his momentary anger at my inattention and I lost sight of the smiling man with shaggy brown hair and a long white cane that had just come through the door with a large group of laughing friends. Sighing I turned to the waitress and gave her my order of a sweet tea, salad, and two large pieces of pepperoni pizza. _What the heck_ I thought. With the eventful and strange day I'd had a little food therapy was just what I needed.

**A/N: So…have we realized that perhaps Annie is a bit anti-war? I don't know that there's any truth to that but somehow I think it fits her. This is fanfiction after all. And heads up about the few curses in here—the guys (Jai) will probably say a few more before it's all over and done but nothing worse than what's been seen here. If that's a problem, let me know and I'll fix it because I don't want to upset anyone. Hope it's going okay so far. I'm not really sure where this is going but it's going, albeit slowly and spontaneously. Please let me know what you think because I love feedback! **


	4. Chapter 4

_**Chapter 4**_

"Wait a second, wait a second."

I looked up to see my granddaughter, head tilted and wearing a puzzled look on her face. Jokingly I asked if she was ready to continue our checkers game. Grinning, she quickly answered no and then asked a question of her own.

"From the mouths of babes come words of wisdom" right? Well, I knew first hand that sometimes the things that left Gwen's mouth were way beyond her years. So I expected this next question to be something deep or philosophical. But, just as children do, she quickly reminded me that she was, after all, just nine.

"What is food therapy?"

For the next three days I tried to come up with various reasons that would require me to initiate contact with the (still nameless) guy in my French class. And…I was getting absolutely nowhere.

Two days ago I had made the mistake of telling my sister of this man. And now she wouldn't leave me alone about ways to attract his attention, details of what he was like, and when our next date was. Never mind the fact that our one and only conversation had lasted a total of three minutes and that we hadn't even had a first date. But, that was Danielle for you. A reckless, hopeless romantic. Her latest bit of advice was to drop my pen under his chair. "You don't think that'd work?"

"No," I answered laughing. "That would only embarrass us both! He'd be embarrassed because he's blind and wouldn't be able to find my pen, easily that is. And I would be _mortified_ by my own personal thoughtlessness."

"Oh. Yes, I suppose that would make sense…hmmn. Well, I'll just have to come up with something else then."

"Dani, why don't you just worry about Daddy's leave party coming up and I'll worry about my French buddy, huh?"

With a slow smile Danielle nodded her affirmation. And then launched into the details of the party she was planning for next week while Daddy took his annual leave of absence. Luckily my sister, like Jai, would continue rambling with a slight nod and grunt every couple of sentences. This left me to my own thoughts and plans.

What was I going to do about this guy? Honestly, he wasn't bad looking at all. In fact, he was un-objectively attractive. Shaggy brown hair, deep chocolate eyes, tall, dark…** (well you get the idea)**. The idea of attracting his attention was intriguing but I didn't know how to go about it—after all, how do you go about flirting with a guy who can't see your advances? Oh mon Dieu… already obsessing. And I didn't even know his name yet!

**A/N: I'm so sorry that this is so short! It was written very hastily—mainly because I feel guilty for not updating in a few weeks. Way too long! I think I'm setting something up to happen…I've just figure out what exactly is happening. So a little warning: I may come back and revamp this chapter later and take things in a different turn. Hope you enjoy and if you have any advice to offer… please do not hesitate! I love constructive criticism and advice. J Happy Fourth! **


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